From reading your other threads you sound incredibly selfish and I totally agree with your DH that your DC should be told that YOU have taken the decision to blow their lives apart.

Your DH, who you admit is a 'decent man' has worked his bollocks off for years to enable you to have a mortgage free lifestyle on £300k a year while you have been a SAHM for 15 years. Now as the DC have grown up, you are bored with DH, had an EA with an old boyfriend and want your DH to hand over the house to you and spousal support and, for him to go and live elsewhere.

I think you've got a flaming cheek and should grow up. Your DCs are the ones who will suffer due to your 'midlife crisis' and I feel very sorry for them. I also pity your poor DH. I hope you tell you DC the truth about why you are splitting up as they are old enough to understand, and they can then decide who they want to live with.

I speak as a 41 year old woman who still does not know why my childhood was ruined by my parents divorcing (and the subsequent hatred for each other and toxic remarriages) as they decided it was 'nothing to do with me'. I disagree, it was my life that was shattered. You take the decision to do that to your DCs, you take the fallout.

As the OP knows, I'm no fan of some of her past actions but at least she had the decency to tell her husband about her affair and is now ending her marriage instead of pretending that everything was okay and stringing him along in complete ignorance that something massive had changed her feelings towards him.

With luck, this family will work better with the parents apart and the OP and her husband will be able to have happier lives.

Wow. I've only seen one of your other threads, jenny, and that was too painful to comment on. But after DontPark's summary I have to post.

You are acting out the life of my mother 30 years ago.

The mother I no longer speak to.

It don't have a problem with her leaving my father: that's her right. It's her persistent teflon refusal, even now, to take responsibility for her actions, and her willingness to sacrifice anyone - my father, us, family friends - to deflect that responsibility, that has destroyed any respect or possibility of an ongoing relationship. To this day, she keeps up a constant background patter of self-justification which necessarily blames everyone else, to the point I can no longer be complicit with it.

I found your previous thread chilling. It was the one where you were afraid that the children would prefer to stay in their own home rather than spend as much time as you wanted at your new, second household. Your solution was to force the children's existing home to be sold. You'd be prepared to sweep away your children's remaining security, as cover for your moving out, in the mistaken belief this would stop you looking like the "bad guy".

Please do not do this stuff.

You are perfectly entitled to leave your marriage.

But if you want a) to hurt your children as little as possible, and b) keep their respect, trust and love, you MUST take the responsibility that is yours. You must be honest that you are doing this for you, not scapegoat others. You must be honest that this will hurt your children, and acknowledge their pain if they need to express it to you. And you must not lie: people can adjust to change; deceit, not so much.

If you can do these things, you may well come through with perfectly good relationships, indeed a better family for your children under the new arrangements.

If you can't, you may lose them through your actions around the divorce, not because of the divorce itself.

How did you get on Jenny, how have the dc taken the news?'D'H told my dc he was leaving on Sunday because he didn't love me and didn't want to live with me. They are 4 and 7 and have not taken it well. Hope you are all ok x

I hve never been trying to monopolise my children's time and I won't be doing that.

I have been very unhappy for several years for many reasons and have made mistakes in that time. Most of us make mistakes some times. I was able to be completely honest here to try and help me through a very hard time and I am grateful for all support and criticism I received.

Thank you for all support and all comments. It was awful to tellthe children and was the hardest thing I have ever done but I think thanks to you all we handled it well.

I said that I am unhappy and that daddy and me have tried very hard but we can't make it work. I said that it was me who wasn't happy and we were very honest without being inappropriate.

Both children were very upset and cried, as did we.

The older one said he knew it was coming. As soon as I told them to sit down he had tears in his eyes. Over the last year I have said repeatedly to my husband that he knows something as he is intelligent and sensitive and my husband has said that is ridiculous to suggest.

A lot of tears but a lot of honest discussion and then a family board game.

I am in a similar position as you in that it was my decision to split and you are right that the older children just know anyway so I think it is right to be honest (without the gory details of course.)

Thank you notmostpeople. I guess everyone is entitled to their opinion.

Some of the negative comments can be helpful.

But more often they are just incredibly hurtful. But I try to be reasonable and remind myself that this forum is a cross section of real life with the good, the bad, and the ugly.

All comments are gratefully received and all comments help me in a constructive way.

My fear is for the people who start threads who may be already unbalanced and may not see things in an objective way as I feel I can. I appreciate and value what everybody has said and even the hurtful comments give me a lot to think about.

Although obviously the support helps a lot and helps me stay strong xx

Jenny when you think back to the complete state you were in over that other bloke and how much of an obsession it was to the point of complete insanity, of course your son would have noticed that things were far from okay. Your husband's insistence that his son hadn't noticed a thing is all part of his anger with himself that he himself didn't tumble what you were up to. But your son saw far more of you than your husband did - and was bound to notice that you were behaving very strangely. Don't blame your husband for any of that. Neither should he blame himself. He trusted you.

And be careful of rewriting this so that the marriage break-up is all about being a lonely wife and mum who 'couldn't help' reaching out for attention. If you don't spend a bit of time now looking at your own behaviour and your own personality, you'll miss out on learning quite a lot about yourself.